Spy Virus Linked to Israel Targeted Hotels - Article Example

Spy Virus Linked to Israel Targeted Hotels Individuals and companies trust Cyber security firms across the world because of their ability to protect their computers from viruses. Regrettably, when the cyber security firms, in their capacity, are under threat from attackers, it turns out to be a security crisis. This was the case for the cyber security firm Kaspersky, which following its cognizance of a successful hack on its computers and networks, sought to find out who else fall victim to the attack.

Surprisingly, three European hotels that had hosted negotiations between Iran and other world powers over the restriction of the production of nuclear weapons had also been attacked. Kaspersky was quick to link the new virus to Israeli following a previous virus attack dubbed “Duqu”, which had a level of sophistication similar to that of the newly identified virus. Even though Israeli had publicly declined projecting any cyber attack on the U.S. and its allies, it admitted that it was “conducting close surveillance on Iranians” (Entous and Yadron, 2015).

Rather than curtailing the production of nuclear weapons, Israeli suspects that the resulting deal could allow Iran to carry on its production of nuclear weapons, hence the spying on the closed-door meetings. Moreover, Israeli has previously targeted events attended by prominent world leaders, and the fact that the virus was also in computers utilized in the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Nazi death camp confirmed the suspicion that Israeli was behind the cyber attack. Even so, the degree of sophistication of the virus has made it difficult for security experts to determine what kind of information the hackers stole.

In fact, security experts estimate that it could take ten adept computer scientists “more than two years to build such a clean copycat” (Entous and Yadron, 2015). Overall, Kaspersky is relentlessly attempting to study the manner in which this sophisticated virus works before embarking on a mission to establish powerful antivirus programs to protect customers from cyber security vulnerability. Cyber criminality has been around for a long time. However, what is striking is that hackers are taking their ‘game’ to a completely new level.

Hackers have come to learn that by targeting security companies, they can learn quite a great deal about internet defenses. For instance, Kaspersky was a victim to the attack since the Israeli had a hint that Kaspersky antivirus programs protected the networks and computers in the target hotels. Following a successful attack on Kaspersky, it would be easy for the hackers to spy on their desired information. Verdonck (2015) affirms that hackers target the most vulnerable links in the company, who are the people.

Kaspersky was no exception since employees un-suspiciously opened emails that had embedded viruses (Entous and Yadron, 2015). What is more, the situation is even worse because the degree of sophistication that the hackers have demonstrated is unprecedented and it poses a wakeup call for security experts to provide customers with cutting-edge antivirus programs to protect them from data bleaches, a menace that has been increasingly associated with the present-day business world (Steinberg, 2011).

In fact, if Kaspersky had its employees trained properly on matters of cyber security, the hackers would have been unsuccessful in their attacks. For that reason, the discipline of cyber security ought to start with the employees, who are overly vulnerable and targets of the attackers. In addition, rather than learning from an attack from time to time, Kaspersky and other cyber security firms should intensify their level of sophistication as well to fully protect their clients from attacks.ReferencesEntous, A.

& Yadron, D. (2015, July 10). Spy virus linked to Israel targeted hotels used for Iran Nuclear talks. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/article_email/spy-virus-linked-to-israel-targeted-hotels-used-for-iran-nuclear-talks-1433937601-lMyQjAxMTE1NjMzMTYzMTE5WjSteinberg, R. (2011). Governance, risk management, and compliance: It can't happen to us—avoiding corporate disaster while driving success. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.Verdonck, C. (2015). Cyber security. Deloitte. Retrieved from http://www2.deloitte.com/be/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/cyber-security_hackers-target-the-weakest-link-in-a-company.html